Sunday, August 28, 2005

The infamous "Palinka Evening"

Well, that wasn’t exactly a satisfactory ending to yesterday, but that’s about where it ended, so... Last night was continuing the ascend into drunken revelry (although I think tonight won’t be as bad (or good?)). Hm, and yes I do have to say I’ve been thinking of it as an ascend, maybe something like, the continuing increase in level of intoxication. Now I’ve gotten way off-track. The facts: last night, right after classes, we decided to go to Ikea, and off we went (self, Rosaland, Kyle, Gaines and Jeremy; the latter two were “Ikea virgins”). I think a good time was had by all, and I managed to restrain myself to buying chalk (for the classroom, of course), colored pencils, and a mug, all of which came to about 1200Ft, I think. The same group ended up going to some little vendéglõ near Vista, which was nice. Afterward, we found a little 24-hour store and bought palinka, which we brought back to the Kollégium. On our way down to the garden to drink it and some wine, we ran into other groups of people on their way out, all with different plans and all under the horrible, democracy-based American idea that we should go out together and all be happy about it. After much to-do and the kind of wavering that I hate to deal with, we just did the logical thing and each person chose for themselves where they wanted to go. We (I can’t even know who, maybe 7 people) ended up in the garden for a few minutes, and when it started drizzling, back in our room. I think about 10-15 (the best estimates of Gaines and Liz both fell in here) people eventually, until about 2. We just sat and listened to music and drank and hung out. It was wonderful; somehow it felt very cathartic for me. Does that make sense? I can’t explain it any other way. You know, the other night when Liz, Jem and I were walking around, someone said something about how there has been a relative lack of drunkenness so far this trip. To the point of abstaining, even. Yes, to me that seemed like something was lacking.